Data Integration Blog -

Things are getting exciting here in the Austin office as we anticipate the GA arrival of Pervasive Data Integrator(TM) v10. Seems as though every time we have a meeting internally, we’re learning about more and more great features that apply to almost all verticals! I thought I’d take some time to highlight some of the features we’ve gotten to play with and exhibited to customers recently, and how they’re different from Pervasive Data Integrator v9.2.

First, we’ve got a BEAUTIFUL NEW UI! Designers and management capabilities have been given a facelift in Adobe Flex and the architecture was given a makeover. It now includes an ESB, and is designed for multi-user cloud or server deployment.

The new cloud oriented architecture is one of the biggest changes.  In v9, the software stack and designers are all installed on your local machine. You’d then move those artifacts to the server in a package after designing. With v10 the software can be installed and configured on an internal server or even a remote cloud that can be accessed from any browser that supports Flash. From here you can design and deploy remotely. This is big for your enterprise level integration deployments and also for global end users.

A feature new to v10 is the concept of datasets.  Datasets describe the connectivity endpoints and schemas for any system.  In v9 one would select source and target data as well as any properties for each map. Having the dataset (comprised of filters, connection info, and schema) decoupled from the map allows greater reusability. Once you have created the dataset, it can then be used by any map in the current project or exported to another project in the repository.  Using datasets allows for much more reusability thus making the process of creating maps a more enjoyable experience.

In v9, once you completed an integration, we could package and deploy it to a production machine, or execute it directly in place.  Source control and versioning took place in an external system like CVS or SourceSafe, and changes were made on a design desktop. In v10 the option to create releases, and other versioning functions are included.  Once a project has been completed it can be packaged into a 1.0 release ready for deployment.  If a change needs to be made to a map or process an update to the package can be created (1.1) or a new package can also be created (2.0).  With release documentation and management, this makes the solution development process much more organized and reflective of a software development process… without all the code! This is very handy for ISV customers and BSPs who are constantly having to make changes to enable their customers.

Now that you have created and deployed releases into production, how will you manage them?  In v9, you had separate options such as integration manager or Integration Hub to schedule and monitor.  In v10, managing your integrations is easy with the built-in management interface.  We can now manage multiple instances of v10 including design servers and “Workers” (which accept jobs to run, introducing built-in scaling).  It will show you activity of your servers and you can even drill down to view a graphical representation of integration jobs to see any spikes or failures.

You can create watch lists to monitor specific servers or specific integrations you want to keep an eye on.  Scheduling integrations can also be done from the manager.  Once you have created a package, you can then select it from the manager and schedule it to run one time or during intervals.  There is even a calendar which displays which integrations are going to run on each day.  This console adds a lot more value for the IT Solutions Architects and Server Administrators who will be monitoring the servers. Security administrators will be very interested in the role-based and group-based access, backups, and locked down local access directories which keep accessed applications, directories, and users on as short a leash as they would like.

This is all great stuff for ISVs, BSPs, and end users with enterprise needs. There’s more to come in the future, but we, internally, are all really excited to get to work with 10 and see all of the capabilities to come out. You can check out some walkthroughs and more at the new Pervasive Integration Resource Center, if you’re interested in seeing how this can apply to you and your customers.